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If your department has time bank/benefit time accruals (be they weekly, pay-period based, yearly, etc.) our system allows you to set these up to automatically deposit at the appropriate time and rate. You can even set these rates/frequencies on a user-by-user basis.
Establish Base Accrual Rules
To begin, go here (Admin Tab -> Time Banks -> Time Banks).
Before you can set rates and frequencies on a user-by-user basis, you first need to establish a base accrual rule. This tells the system that an accrual exists for this bank in the first place. The rate & frequency we set for the base rule(s) will be attributed to everyone at first, but you can change individual values after this creation.
On the Time Banks summary page (aka "index"), find the bank you'd like to create an accrual for, and click "Edit" next to it. (I'll use the "Personal Bank" in this example, as no accrual rules exist for it yet).
You should now see a page full of Personal Bank details, one of which is a section that lists out any accrual rules you have established for this bank. This is empty right now, as we have yet to create any accruals. Click the blue link that says "+ Add Accrual Rule".
You will be presented with 4 or 5 different data fields in this rule creation process. These are explained below.
Accrual Rate Type
There is currently only one option for this field, "Constant Rate". therefore you don't need to worry about what this setting does, just select "Constant Rate".
Hours Granted (aka "Rate")
This is where you specify how many hours should be awarded each time this accrual is triggered. Remember that whatever we set here is just a base rate, and we can change this value on a user-by-user basis after we create the base rule.
With this in mind, I highly recommend entering the most common rate in your department here, that way you don't have to make as many manual rate adjustments to each user when we cross that bridge.
Period (aka "Frequency")
There are 6 options in this drop-down menu at the time of this writing...
- Monthly - accrues once per month
- Quarterly - accrues once every 3 months
- Yearly - accrues once per year
- Anniversary - accrues on a person's respective hire date
- Pay Period - accrues at the start of each pay period
- Custom - accrues every custom number of days
Period Length (Days)
Only appears if a "Custom" period was selected. If none of the other Periods fit the bill, you can specify a custom accrual period, where you manually define the number of days between each accrual trigger. This field is where you define that number.
Start Date
Only appears for (1) "Monthly", (2) "Quarterly", (3) "Yearly", and (4) "Custom" periods, and it indicates the date that the accrual should trigger.
- If you chose Monthly, then the date you select here will trigger an accrual once per month. For example if I chose 5/15/2019, then this accrual would trigger on the 15th of every month.
- If you choose a date that does not exist in some months (e.g. the 31st), then the accrual will trigger on the final day of those shorter months instead.
- If you choose a date that does not exist in some months (e.g. the 31st), then the accrual will trigger on the final day of those shorter months instead.
- If you chose Quarterly, then the date you select here will trigger an accrual once every 3 months. For example if I chose 5/15/2019, then this accrual would trigger on 5/15 , 8/15, 11/15, and so on.
- If you choose a date that does not exist in some months (e.g. the 31st), then the accrual will trigger on the final day of those shorter months instead.
- If you choose a date that does not exist in some months (e.g. the 31st), then the accrual will trigger on the final day of those shorter months instead.
- If you chose Yearly, then the date you select here will trigger an accrual only once per year. For example if I chose 5/15/2019, then this accrual would trigger on 5/15/2019, 5/15/2020, 5/15/2021, and so on.
- If you choose February 29th here, then non-leap years will trigger the accrual on February 28th instead.
- If you choose February 29th here, then non-leap years will trigger the accrual on February 28th instead.
- If you chose Custom, then the date you select here will simply be the starting point for the Period Length (Days) counter.For example if I chose a Period Length of 10 days, and a start date of 5/02/2019, then the accrual would trigger on 5/02/2019, 5/12/2019, 5/22/2019, and so on.
Once you've filled out all of these fields, click the blue "Save Rule" button. You will still need to save the Time Bank itself after saving the Accrual Rule, so be sure to click the blue "Save" button after saving the accrual rule.
This Accrual Rule is now functioning! There is no need to "activate" the rule in any way, it is already rockin' & rollin'.
NOTE: You can set up multiple accrual rules for a time bank, just keep clicking the "+ Add Accrual Rule" button after you save each new rule, and you can add another. Each of these rules will receive their own column in the User Accrual Rates page.
Set Individual Accrual Rates
Now that our base rule(s) are in place, we can adjust each individual user's rate & frequency for each rule. To begin, go here: (Admin Tab -> Time Banks -> User Accrual Rates).
The page you arrive at will have a table made up of users (rows) and accrual rules (columns). Again, notice that each person has the rate and frequency defined in the base rule currently, so we only need to update those fields for users that differ from the base values. Once you've adjusted these values to your satisfaction, scroll to the very bottom of the table and click the blue "Save" button.
NOTE: When updating accrual rates on this page, any changes made will only update future accruals. They will NOT have any effect on past accruals that have already been awarded.
